Driveway gates in Kildare

• Detached houses on their own sites. 38% of homes are detached, the 25th highest share of the 26 counties. A detached house usually has its own entrance with piers, and a pair of swing gates or a sliding gate across a wider opening. New piers are a big line on the quote: gates with pillars.
• New estates. 1,809 estate houses were finished in Kildare in 2025. Kildare County Council gives the example of an estate permission that requires open-plan front gardens, which takes a front wall out of the planning exemption. Check your estate's conditions before you order gates.
• Farm and yard entrances. Kildare had 2,534 farms in the 2020 Census of Agriculture. A yard gate that opens many times a day needs a motor rated for that use, and a wide, heavy gate needs a bigger motor and stronger hinges. Gate motors.

Kildare County Council lists the restrictions that take work out of the exemption, including a condition of an earlier permission. In 2026 it decided that a 1.8 m aluminium sliding gate at the back of a house in Kildare town needed permission: the gate's height and material were within Class 5, but the estate's 1992 permission set the rear boundaries, and the planner judged a new access onto the road there a traffic hazard (Section 5 declaration ED1343).

The planning rules in full: Class 5 word for word, entrances, walls and piers, and how a Section 5 declaration works.